ThePledge

In response to the administration's proposed policies, we have launched our Global Detroit Champions for Growth campaign of local business and community leaders to highlight awareness of immigrants’ economic contributions, oppose weakening of existing immigration laws, and building stronger regional policies.

Refugee ImpactReport

Find Your

Global Detroit

For Immigrants &Internationals

For Global Champions

For CityBuilders

For Business Leaders

Powering

Detroit

Global Detroit is a regional economic development engine that leverages the talent, ingenuity, entrepreneurial spirit, and determination of immigrants in Metro Detroit to power the regional economy. Find out more.

Are you an immigrant or international student? An immigrant or refugee entrepreneur or professional? An international investor? Click here to find helpful tools to better connect you with the resources you need to find a job, start a business, or obtain the support services that you and your family need to become a part of our region’s exciting recovery.

Are you interested in knowing more about immigration as an economic development strategy and how you can support this growing field? Click here to find research, resources, and toolkits for internationalizing your city.

Our Partner Initiatives

( the implementation of our efforts)

Following the publication of the Global Detroit Study, Global Detroit has developed new programs and strategies that make the region more attractive and welcoming to immigrants, internationals, refugees, and foreign trade and investment as a means to produce jobs and regional economic growth. Since 2010, Global Detroit and its partner initiatives have attracted over $7 million in philanthropic, corporate, government and individual investments and launched over a half dozen of the recommendations in the Global Detroit Study. Click on one of our partner organizations or initiatives to learn more.

Welcome Mat Detroit

The Welcome Mat is both an interactive online directory of service providers and a network of service providers working to roll out the Welcome Mat for new arrivals.

ProsperUS Detroit

Cultural Ambassadors

The Global Detroit Cultural Ambassadors program seeks to better connect and welcome immigrants, international students, foreign visitors, international investors, and the region’s international communities.

Welcoming Michigan / Michigan Immigrants Rights Center

GTRI

GTRI focuses on strengthening and diversifying Michigan’s economy through the retention of top international talent. By retaining international students, GTRI is a catalyst to lessening the skills gap, especially in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), and cultivating a climate in which Michigan businesses can be competitive in the new economy.

Upwardly Global

Upwardly Global works with more than 1,500 immigrants, refugees, and asylees every year to provide job search training and to connect them with employers looking to develop a pipeline of global talent. To date, UpGlo has placed more than 2,200 new Americans who had been unemployed or underemployed working as janitors, taxi drivers, and nannies back into professional jobs as engineers, software developers, and business professionals.

EB-5 Investor Visa

Michigan now has nearly a dozen pre-approved EB-5 Investor Visa Regional Centers that enable international investors to obtain legal residency in the U.S. for a $500,000 investment in a U.S. business that produces 10 jobs over a five-year period. Global Detroit has helped connect potential investors to these centers, as well as champion the use of these investment vehicles as low-cost capital to spur the region’s economic growth, as has been done in Dallas, Philadelphia, and other regions.

Nearshoring

Global Detroit has partnered with regional economic development partners, as well as with our friends in Windsor, Canada to develop an analysis of a regional nearshoring initiative that would aggressively recruit firms that want to expand operations in the U.S., but who are restrained by our immigration caps on skilled international workers. Detroit-Windsor can become the leading “nearshoring” base for the new economy. Not other U.S. region is as close, as large, or possesses as much binational business acumen developed over years of cooperative work on automotive manufacturing and other industries.

WE Global Network

The WE Global Network, a project of Welcoming America in partnership with Global Detroit, is comprised of over a dozen regional economic development initiatives from across the Midwest working to tap into the economic opportunities created by immigrants. Immigrant communities, when welcomed in their new home, can generate greater economic growth, job creation, and prosperity for an entire city or region.

64 %

3 X

6X

Michigan immigrants are 6x more likely than native-born to start a high-tech firm

7X

Michigan immigrants are 7x more likely than native-born to file an international patents

32.8 %

Immigrants launched 32.8% of all high-tech firms in Michigan, ranking Michigan #3 in the nation after CA and NJ (1995-2005)

2.62

Every foreign STEM worker with an advanced U.S. degree is estimated to create 2.62 additional American jobs

25 %

Immigrants created 25% of all high-tech firms nationally (1995-2005)

40 %

More than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children in 2010

10 MM

These companies employ 10 million people worldwide...

$4.2 Tr

And generate revenues of $4.2 trillion, greater than the GDP of every country in the world except China, Japan, and the U.S.

50 %

Start-up rate of immigrants has grown by 50%, whereas the U.S. born rate declined 10% (1996-2011)

$126 B

Immigrant owned businesses pay out $126 billion in payroll each year

28 %

Immigrants started 28% of new small business (2011)

4.7 MM

Immigrant small businesses employ 4.7 million workers

$800 B

Immigrant small businesses generate $800 billion in sales

Immigrant communities, when welcomed in their new home, can generate greater economic growth, job creation, and prosperity for an entire city or region. The WE Global Network helps to strengthen the work, maximize the impact, and sustain the efforts of individual local initiatives across the Midwest that welcome, retain, and empower immigrant communities as valued contributors to local community and economic development initiatives. Learn more.